So we have already talked about most of the epidemics that are going on we’ve talked about the flu, we’ve talked about COVID, and we have even talked about the Ebola outbreak in Congo. So what else is there to cover? There is another outbreak that is occurring and it is an outbreak of meningitis. The location for this outbreak? Ghana. According to an article from Modern Ghana, the outbreak is a new serotype that has never been seen before. If you don’t know serotype is just a different way of saying strain. So like you know how you have to get the flu shot each year? It’s because there are different strains of the flu circulating, adapting, and changing. This is also what has happened with COVID. If you look close enough at your lysol can and what it can and can’t kill you probably will be surprised to see that it kills coronavirus. So like how can they say that when it just started coming about? Well actually the coronavirus has been around a long time it’s just that the cause of this pandemic is a typically violent strain that has evolved from what we would normally see, but not actually see. So that is what is happening now in Ghana with their Meningitis outbreak, it’s a new strain that is particularly violent and they don’t have many defenses against it at the moment.
Meningitis is an inflammation of the tissue that covers your brain and spinal cord. Both of which are pretty important for your body so an inflammation can be very important. Just yesterday there was a press release where they declared that 258 people had contracted this rare strain of meningitis with 40 deaths in the last thirteen weeks. Since this is a strain that they have never seen before they reported that 70% of people who get infected with this disease die because there is no known vaccine strain. Which is what is happening in the COVID pandemic we are undergoing as well. This can be pretty dangerous because finding a vaccine takes time but we all know that viruses and diseases don’t just sit around a wait just to give scientists more time to find a vaccine. Unfortunately this press release as mentioned how their Government continues to brief the population on the COVID progress but haven’t mentioned much of the Meningitis outbreak, which at the moment is what is killing more people. Honestly this kind of sounds familiar to what our government is doing. We get COVID updates all the time but I don’t ever remember getting Influenza updates and we all know that the flu kills thousands a year but it’s just kind of brushed under the carpet. Which is sadly what it sounds like Ghana is doing with the Meningitis outbreak as well.
A more recent update from Ghanaweb hinted that this outbreak has been going on for a few months now as they report that there have been 409 people who have contracted this disease since February. From their statistics they have calculated that the disease has a 15% fatality rate. Which I mean seems like a small percentage but honestly that can be a pretty large number when you start increase the overall number. I mean think about it like shopping, if you were shopping and you got 15% sales tax instead of 7%. That’s a big difference. So put that into perspective with people, a 15% fatality rate of a disease has the potential of being devastating. Well at least what they have calculated was a 15% rate but later they reported that this serotype was a combination of Neisseria meningitidis serotype X as well as Streptococcus pneumonia which they then says averages to a 40% fatality rate. They did fortunately report that there is effective treatment available but yet no vaccine yet. Circumstances like this are what make it tough on infectious disease doctors when all of their patients are sick and they are working essentially against the clock to create a vaccine, kind of like what our doctors are doing today with COVID.
Mo's Microbes 